Obama slams DeMint on 'Waterloo'

President Obama accused Republicans of playing political games with health care reform Monday, taking aim at South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint for suggesting a defeat on health care could be a “Waterloo” moment for Obama.

“Just the other day, one Republican senator said – and I'm quoting him now – ‘If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him,’” Obama said, quoting DeMint. “Think about that. This isn’t about me. This isn’t about politics. This is about a health care system that is breaking America’s families, breaking America’s businesses, and breaking America’s economy. And we can’t afford the politics of delay and defeat when it comes to health care, not this time, not now.”

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DeMint made the remarks on a call last week organized by the group Conservatives for Patients Rights, which opposes Obama’s plans for health care reform.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs defended Obama’s tactic of directly engaging DeMint and went a step further, calling out conservative columnist Bill Kristol as one of those Republicans who are peddling “a breathtaking message.”

Obama “could just have easily have quoted a Republican strategist today who said to go for the kill and asked opponents to resist the temptation to be responsible,” Gibbs said, referring to Kristol’s Weekly Standard blog post that urges opponents of Obama’s reform plans to resist the temptation “to let up on their criticism, and to try to appear constructive, or at least responsible.”

“If that’s the message that they want to have that’s certainly their business, but understand that delay means real things,” Gibbs said, noting that there are voters in DeMint’s state who want health care reform. “There clearly are those that want to oppose this purely to continue the 40-year-old Washington gamesmanship of playing politics on health care.”

The White House’s tactic of zeroing in on specific critics marks its more intense effort to thwart opposition to reform, while still appearing to spar above the fray by not directly naming names.

In his statement at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, Obama also said the need for health care reform is “urgent and it is indisputable.”

But he notably did not repeat his August deadline, instead saying it needed to be done “by the end of this year.”

Gibbs cleared up the August mystery, telling reporters: “The president believes we’re making good progress. And the president believes we can get this done by August.”